It Takes a Starship
by omelettethemusical
Summary: Jean-Luc Riker-Troi has grown up on the USS Titan. It's been an unusual childhood, to say the least. But he wouldn't trade it for anything.


**Mom**

He loved the warm belly he rested on when he fed from her breasts. He loved her laugh when he reached up to play with her dark curls - just like the ones he would grow himself in a few months. He loved her soft voice singing him to sleep at night. He loved the chocolate she replicated for him when he was hurt or sad. He had inherited her sweet tooth.

When he got older, sometimes he wished he wasn't stuck on a starship with his mother all the time. Whenever he complained that she was embarrassing him, she just looked at him pointedly and said "Gosh, I wonder what it would be like to have an embarrassing mother." But he sought out her advice frequently, especially when it came to being an empath. She was the only other empath on the ship, and being half-Betazoid while he was only a quarter, her senses were stronger than his. So when he thought he had found his imzadi, he asked her how he would know. She told him that only he could tell that, but what she sensed from him was the same way she had felt with Dad. He proposed the next day. Bev said yes.

She danced with Dad at the wedding. They were as much in love as the day they married.

 **Dad**

He loved his large, broad chest that he would fall asleep on after hearing a bedtime story. He loved his blue eyes, just like his own. He loved the beard that tickled when he kissed - he wanted to grow one himself someday. He didn't always love the way he woke him up by playing his trombone right by his bed. In fact, one day he snuck into Dad's bedroom and tried to play it to wake him up. It was too big for him, and he ended up dropping it on his foot. That woke Dad up, and later that day he replicated a trumpet that was just the right size for him. Soon jam sessions became their daily pastime.

As captain of the ship, Dad was pretty busy. But he always made time for him. For example, he taught him to play poker. Dad had a great poker face, but being an empath gave Jean-Luc the edge. Once Dad took him and Mom to Alaska on shore leave. The mountains were so majestic that Jean-Luc couldn't believe he had ever left. It was rather cold, though.

He often wondered if he would grow up to be as tall as his father. The answer was, not quite. But he had the same grin, a grin that managed to attract Beverly Crusher, daughter of his "uncle" Wesley. When he found out they were engaged, Dad hugged him and congratulated him for marrying the woman he loved as soon as he found her and not being an idiot like his father.

He played his trombone at their wedding. Mom got him to shut up and dance.

 **Nana**

For a couple of weeks a year, Jean-Luc would visit his Nana on Betazed. She was an Ambassador and a full telepath, and would pamper him whenever he stayed with her. She constantly fretted about how children shouldn't be raised on starships, and Jean-Luc could tell she was disappointed that his empathic abilities had been diluted by so much human blood. But the embarrassing childhood stories she told about Mom always made him laugh.

Nana died when Jean-Luc was a teenager. Mom cried all night as Dad tried to comfort her. Jean-Luc made her real chocolate brownies, but nothing seemed to help.

At Betazoid funerals, like Betazoid weddings, all the guests were naked. When he saw his parents and lots of other people standing naked over Nana's body, Jean-Luc felt like laughing and crying at the same time. But, he thought, that was exactly what Nana would have wanted.

 **Grandpa**

Jean-Luc was a frequent guest of his parents' former captain at the latter's family estate in France. One day, Jean-Luc realized that he didn't know what to call the old man - "Captain" or "Mr. Picard" seemed too formal - and asked if he could call him Grandpa. Grandpa smiled and said, "Of course." He had never been a father, so he must have been quite pleasantly surprised to suddenly be a grandfather.

People said Grandpa hated kids, but he adored Jean-Luc. Maybe it was because he was named for him. Maybe it was because he adored Jean-Luc's parents. Or maybe he had just mellowed in his old age. Whatever the reason, he treated the boy as his own flesh and blood. He let Jean-Luc pick grapes in his vineyard and read the old books in his library. Jean-Luc often worried that he couldn't live up to Grandpa's name. Grandpa assured him that he had the makings of a first-rate Starfleet officer, but that he and his parents would be proud of him no matter what path he chose.

Grandpa died a few years after Nana. They all went to the funeral in France, and Mom and Dad wore black for the next month, according to old Earth customs of mourning. Jean-Luc wished he could have known him better. When he got married, he wished Grandpa could have known that Jean-Luc would marry Beverly.

 **Uncles and Aunts**

Jean-Luc had an abundance of unrelated uncles. He also had an unrelated aunt, Aunt Beverly, who was the mother of Uncle Wesley, the Titan's chief engineer. When Jean-Luc started dating Bev, he worried that Uncle Wesley wouldn't like him anymore. Dad joked that it was the first time anyone had ever been afraid of Wesley.

Uncle Geordi taught engineering at Starfleet Academy, so Jean-Luc only got to see him when he went to Earth. He always gave Jean-Luc the coolest presents and told him amazing stories.

Uncle Worf and Uncle Miles both served on Deep Space Nine, and he visited them there with his parents several times (when it was safe to do so). He regarded their children, Alexander and Molly respectively, as his cousins. They would hang out together while Mom and Dad went on double dates with Worf and Jadzia or Miles and Keiko. However, Uncle Worf wouldn't let Alexander play sports with Jean-Luc until Jean-Luc was ten years old, and by then Alexander was all grown up. Even Mom and Dad wouldn't let them play together. Jean-Luc later found out that this was because Worf had accidentally killed a human boy during a soccer game when he was a child.

For all the uncles and aunts that Jean-Luc knew, there were more that he didn't. For example, Mom's older sister Kestra, who had drowned at the age of seven and who Mom hadn't even known about until a few years ago. Dad's transporter twin Thomas, who had joined the Maquis and been sentenced to life in a Cardassian labor camp. And then there were his parents' late comrades on the Enterprise, Tasha Yar and Data. Jean-Luc found the idea of androids a little scary, but Mom assured him that Data had had emotions, just not the way biological lifeforms do.

Jean-Luc's family was more than a starship - it spanned the entire galaxy. Whenever he looked out at the stars, no matter where he was, he always felt at home.

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 _A/N: I've been super busy with school lately, but I've finally had a bit of a break. Just one more week and then it's over! And hopefully I'll get back to this fandom. Please review!_


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